Take Yourself Out of It

When Emma Stone told director Yorgos Lanthimos that she was nervous about possibly winning an Oscar for her performance in Poor Things and having to give a speech, Yorgos said, “Take yourself out of it.” It comes at a time in our contemporary culture where so many of us are supposed to be cultivating a brand, engaging in self-promotional campaigns—not just around an event, but constantly racking up views and followers, as if we’re all jockeying for Biggest Cult Leader, and not coincidentally, anxiety rates are spiking.

We’re told, in so many ways, to put ourselves into it.

Yorgos’ advice is counter-cultural and, I believe, primal, and may be the smartest antidote to anxiety I’ve ever heard.

It’s also great writing advice—for creatives and entrepreneurs.

First of all, Emma Stone has talked about her relationship with anxiety openly. She panics. She even mentions panic in her Oscar speech, which is where she tells the story with Yorgos’ advice. From previous things she’s said, I take it that she realizes anxiety is powerful and instead of trying to erase it, she works with it. That’s also my take. I can’t make a team of horses disappear, but I can try to guide them in a direction. Fuel is fuel, even anxious fuel is precious.

But what does it mean to “take yourself out of it.” I’ve found that one of the best ways to feel less anxious—when I approach the page as a writer or touring or all the other stuff that comes with it—is to tell myself: Just be of use. Be helpful to someone else. In this way, I take the pressure off of myself to be someone and to perform. Instead, I’m there to help solve a greater problem. I’m there for the small moment when I connect with another human being. It’s no longer about me. It’s about others. That grounds me.

It also, I think, makes people want to work with me. I’m here to help. How can I help?

Does this sound like internalized sexism?

Because I think there’s a case to be made that, as a woman, I’ve absorbed the notion that my selfhood is more comfortable being erased and then replaced with something like servitude. And, raised Catholic, I always have to check myself against dogma and patriarchy. Last thing I want is to do the patriarchy’s work for them.

If I’m to absorb wisdom from the best life coaches out there, I should be stepping into my power, not hiding my light under a bushel, and shining—brightly and publicly—because in doing so I can inspire others.

Got it. Absolutely. I’m checking myself.

But at the same time, I’m also doing a gut-check, and self-promotion—which has been a big part of my job as a writer—still feels awful.

And what if that’s not just me or the patriarchy or sexism but something imprinted on my DNA? What if, hear me out, Look at me! feels awful because, on an evolutionary level, it separates you from the herd? And that separation makes you vulnerable and that vulnerability means you’re more likely to be killed.

Now, this is when, in my head, I cue Orna from Couples Therapy who wants to know about my childhood. I tell her it was a happy childhood. She leans in. “Tell me more,” Orna says.

Well, I was the youngest of four after a notable five-year gap. I was adorable and charming and, just by the function of my birth, I stole the spotlight a little. And I learned that stealing the spotlight was an act of theft and wouldn’t go unpunished. In high school, I had three close friends, all of us were youngests. In my neighborhood growing up, I had three close friends, all youngests. By chance and design, I found other thieves to hang out with and we passed the spotlight around.

My family was a herd. I needed to be inside of the herd to be protected and I was careful not to do too much Look at me!

I went into a career that promised solitude and then I succeeded into the publishing industry and learned to turn that public self-promotional part on and then, mercifully, off—because I needed to reserve my focus for the work itself.

Everything changed. And just as the internet and social media democratized so many aspects of our lives, it also effectively blurred everything seasonal about self-promotion. It no longer required a costly multi-city tour, which was great in many ways. It could be done anywhere, anytime, which could mean: all the time. The way the invention of the washing machine did away with hand-washing, which was a huge reduction of labor, and went from being done once a week on a single day to a never-ending demand with no sense of completion; I should nod here to Marxist Alienation of Labor.

Now, writers are supposed to be putting themselves into the public eye, showing readers more of the lives of the writers behind the books. We can see what poets had for lunch and know when our favorite novelist’s dog has gotten back from the groomers.

It’s not just writers. I worry most about girls and young women who are also building their identities online, sharing important moments, becoming a persona, a brand, in small but constantly curated ways. And each time they post, does that Look at me! make them feel a little bit vulnerable? Hell, yes. They’re young. And although it’s shared with a lot of people, doesn’t it cause a small separation and make them feel a little bit alone? As the responses come in, the judges with their various emojis, the validation (or lack) is from this external force. They can’t take themselves out of it. They are the thing they are promoting.

No wonder anxiety rates for teens—and the general population—are spiking.

As writers, how do we follow Yorgos’ advice?

I’m thinking about Jeff VanderMeer. With the huge success of the Southern Reach Trilogy, Jeff turned his attention to the environment, teaming up with St. Marks Wildlife Refuge, helping raise money for the work that they do. He put out videos showing how he rewilded his yard. Instead of Look at me, he was saying, Look at our fragile ecosystems and Look at this armadillo family. He became part of something far bigger.

Emma Stone received the award, not for herself, but for her entire team. She wasn’t there as a solo actor, but in a group of incredibly talented actors also up for the award. Instead of Look at me, she was more like the one chosen to go up on stage and accept an award on behalf of all of them, which is right. Her character and her acting don’t exist in a vacuum.

And that’s where we get to the deeper work. Even as a solitary writer, it’s not necessarily about you. On my best writing days, I don’t exist. For long stretches of time, something else is happening, something beyond me. I’m just there and the work is being created. When I put myself into it too much, I risk the work being an extension of me. It’s not. Each narrative is its own beast—written through me. I’m not denigrating craft. Knowing my craft, and having decades of experience, is what allows me to get to that space.

The more I take myself out, the better the work, the more it can become itself.

So, here are a few ways to Take Yourself Out.

1. Take yourself out of the promotional cycle. Do it only when necessary. Publicity is no longer ruled by seasons, like agriculture, so you should create seasons to promote and seasons to create.
2. Take yourself out by saying: Look at us instead of Look at me. There’s a team behind everything I write. Acknowledging the team makes me feel less alone and anxious.
3. Take yourself out by saying: Look at this. Being part of a cause can make you feel less alone.
4. Take yourself out by being of use in smaller ways. No causes, no teams. Just being in the moment with other human beings and making another person’s life a bit better. When that’s my mindset, I feel so much more at home in the world.
5. Take yourself out when you come to the page. What if writing itself isn’t about you? What if it’s about something unknowable, something that transpires between you and the page, but has less to do with you than you think? What if you show up and, in showing up, you say yes to that unknowable thing that might transpire? Take yourself out so the work can become what it needs to become.

What do you think of Yorgos’s idea? How would your approach to self-promotion and craft change if you were to apply it to your life? How many other ways might you “take yourself out of it”? The floor is yours.